Inside Restaurant Portion Sizes

One of the biggest dieting slip-ups that you can make is not understanding proper portion sizes. How is this setting you back? You could easily and unknowingly take in 100s of extra calories every day — an amount that translates into more than 10 pounds per year — if you overlook serving size information. The nutrition facts panel on packaged foods makes it pretty easy to locate a product's serving size . . . more on that later. Restaurant foods, however, are another matter!

More From Good Housekeeping

A few months ago, as I was working on a diet story for the magazine, I visited the websites of several restaurant chains to find meals that would fit within our diet plan. What I discovered, as we reported in our June issue, was that at some spots, an entrée that you could easily order for yourself, has a suggested serving size for two or more diners. That means that if you're among the more than 30% of people who check out a restaurant's nutritional info before dining out, you need to have laser sharp focus on the serving size so you don't wind up innocently eating, say, a whole Papa John's cheese Pizza for One thinking it has just 180 calories, when actually, it has four times that amount (720 calories) since a serving is just ¼ of the dish.

Just today, I checked back on the eateries we reported on and I'm pleased to say that Uno Chicago Grill now lists its servings the way you order them, so you can more easily see that the Individual Deep Dish pizza has as many calories as you probably need in a day (that's 1,750 if you're wondering).

Now, back to those packaged foods. It's always a good idea to scan the nutrition facts panel, especially if you're comparing products. Understand that the calories are directly related to the portion size so if you aren't sticking to the serving listed on the package, you'll have to do some calculating. And just to illustrate why it's necessary to check out these figures, consider this example: ½ cup of Haagen Dazs Dulce De Leche ice cream has 290 calories; the same amount of Dreyer's Caramel Delight has less than half that amount—110 calories.

And speaking of ice cream, be sure to check out our ice cream parlor investigation before cooling off with a cone. We found that most places packed in more ice cream than we ordered — a good value for your wallet but not your waistline.

For more easy weight loss and diet tips, along with delicious recipes, tune into Drop 5 Lbs with Good Housekeeping on the Cooking Channel. All of the recipes were triple tested in our very own test kitchen.